A PHASED APPROACH: Yuga Labs Will Roll Out Its Always On Otherside In Stages, According To Garga

Otherside’s persistent launch will take place in phases as Yuga Labs smashes bugs and works through technical challenges including a broader Unreal Engine update necessary for features like AI and more!

Wednesday was anything but boring in the Yugaverse as Yuga Labs CEO Garga aped into the Otherside Discord for another chat with Voyagers.

 

During the conversation, Garga was asked for an update on Otherside’s projected June launch. He explained that the rollout will likely begin with some always-on experiences and expand to include more lands and features over time as the team keeps building and smashing bugs!

“Team is crunching insanely hard. Bug smashing etc in full swing,” Garga said. “Super super proud of the amount of work done in the past year since I took over, and we're doing company wide playtests of stuff like Bathroom Blitz etc. Still hustling for a launch asap, but working through some technical hurdles. We may launch some ODK stuff persistent first (like BB) and phase into Nexus + other main islands over a period of time. Current OS is built on Unreal 5.3, and we're upgrading to 5.5 rn which is a must for a lot of the procedural generation and AI natural language tools we've been developing. That's one of the things that breaks things / introduces new bugs but it's all stuff we can deal with.”

 At this time, we don’t know exactly when in June the first phase will begin. But we do know that completing the Unreal Engine update before launch is key, because once it’s done, Yuga Labs won’t need to upgrade again for a while.

 

“I know the team is is being super thoughtful about this so we don't break shit on folks, and that we're dedicating resources to helping the transition for folks who are currently building on the ODK. Once we launch on 5.5, we'd be staying on there for quite a while so there's no thrash.”

 

As we wait to learn more about the launch of Yuga Labs’ always on Otherside and its phased rollout, two thing’s clear: there will be plenty to do when it opens and it’ll all be powered by $Ape!

“Excited for Otherside's next milestone: the always-on, persistent world,” Garga tweeted in February. “This won't be our only major release this year, but it's a big milestone, and one we're targeting for June... We'll have our always-on social hub, with achievements, trading, tipping and transacting all on ApeChain. Features like Bubbles, Poker, and the Kodacam, as well as a range of ODK experiences, from Bathroom Blitz to smaller games and features, that we've been methodically building out with a variety of different partners and community builders. And at the center of it all is Nexus, the ancestral home of the Kodas.”

 

The Bored Ape Gazette will keep you posted on all things Otherside and let you know when, and what, you can do in the metaverse as it starts to come online this summer!